I'm What's There to Show That Something's Missing

Morr; 2003

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A few years back, somewhere deep within the dark, creaking, bat-infested headquarters of Apple Corp., the demonic wraiths running the company must have hatched an abominable scheme. Not content merely to brainwash the children of the world into Apple loyalty through complimentary comps for schools, marketing goblins created the perfect method of seducing an entirely new market demo: the hipsters.

"By distributing Powerbooks to the IDM artists of the world, we will be able to influence countless scores of captive concert audiences!" the hooded and clawed demonlord Steve Jobs (who just wants you to think he doesn't run the company any more) probably cackled, adding, "Muuuuh-hahahahahahahaha. Ha! Ha! Har-har! Ha!"

Rarely does a show go by these days without branding the fascistic logo of Apple into the crowd's retinas; they're as hard to miss as swooshes at football games. Through some incestuous scene peer pressure, Powerbook requirements have even spread to rock bands, and no artist dares perform his latest programming compositions without the softly glowing fruit silhouette hovering below squinting eyes as he delicately point-clicks through a song.

Styrofoam (neé Arne Van Petegem) is one of the more recent Powerbook hunchbacks I've seen, both opening and manning the click-tracks for The Notwist. Focused entirely on his liquid crystal display, trying to look busy making minute adjustments to pre-arranged music files and occasionally singing, his solo set was every bit as boring as I imagined a live laptop performance could be, standing in stark contrast to the surprisingly spontaneous band-technology intercourse of headliner's set.

So it comes as something of a surprise how much I enjoy Styrofoam's third release, I'm What's There to Show That Something's Missing. I've heard enough of the label by now to know that this is paint-by-numbers Morr music: laid-back pop generously enervated with microhouse ingredients. But Styrofoam is less lap-pop than lap-folk, his songs built on foundations of circular acoustic guitar figures and whispery vocals. If it wasn't for the drag-and-drop modifications, Van Petegem would be your Thursday night coffeehouse distraction; with the electronoise, he's the coffeehouse performer in Tomorrowland.

The obvious comparisons to The Notwist are too distinct to ignore-- "You Pretend You Own This Place" sounds like a distant cousin to "Consequence"-- but Styrofoam is into an even deeper Quaalude haze then his countrymen, the snap-crackle percussion tracks merely circling the melodies with a thin frame of nervous energy. In a largely bass-less environment (only "If I Believed You Back into Focus" possesses what I would unashamedly call "beats"), the only dance move it induces is the soporific head nod. It's easy to be lulled into a trance by this music, especially with the lullaby sentiments of "The Long Wait" and "Blow It Away from Your Eyes" cooing in your ears.

Styrofoam occasionally manages to snap his fingers in your face, to get you to listen more carefully, as on the soaring "A Heart Without a Mind". With somber "Goodbye Blue Sky" guitar lines competing with neon synthesizer pirouettes, Van Petegem somehow conjures up an epic out of micro-implements and vocals that make Sam Prekop sound hardcore. Save the heavy-handed Books-ish vocal samples eavesdropping on the neighbors fighting in "Forever, You Said Forever", he preserves this balance throughout.

Perhaps because I never quite immersed myself in the clicks-and-cuts movement, Styrofoam still sounds fresh to me, where it might not to a more studied follower of the laptop scene. Or perhaps Van Petegem is just a rung above the rest of his mates in the Morr stable, slightly more handy with a melody, or has hit upon a new, compelling kind of slow-glitch. Perhaps the latest models of Powerbook have some kind of eeeeeevil hypnosis plug-in to woo the minds of any zine scribes in the audience. Either way, Styrofoam is a missionary of the Apple's diabolical operation mindcrime that's easy to forgive, a Powerbook hunchback to know and love.